How to Get Started

The world is harsh, but fair. SPAECIMH will not coddle you, will not let a pretty description carry a check, and will not hand you an ending you didn't earn. It will let every choice matter — which is the whole point. Here is the shape of a story.

Create a character

Choose an ORIGIN tier (Mortal → Superhuman → Demigod → God, 00 §1), which sets your raw potential: your notes budget, your derived stats. Distribute your attribute points over the six base attributes — ST, PE, AG, EN, CH, IN — and let the sheet compute the rest (Mana, Health, Carry, Money). Give the character a name, a background, an aspiration, and 1–2 Connections written into the background — those beliefs and ties are a real in-game resource, not just flavor.

Learn the golden rule: minus is a bonus. A −2 makes a 4d6 roll easier; a + makes it harder. (See Making a SPAECIMH Character and How Rolls Work.)

Explore the world

Act, take risks, and accept the consequences — because the world does respond. NPCs have their own motives and remember you. Time and weather move. Factions act on their own. Every risky action is a gamble you can read: you roll 4d6, the dice fight the rules' chaos, and the check tells you whether you landed clean or bought a wound.

Your Fate Points (3 per session) are your emergency brake — a reroll, a dodge of death, a stroke of luck. Your Connections reward you for staying true to yourself: act on one and the roll gets +1; act on one and a Fate Point returns.

Develop

Growth runs on the arc, not a level treadmill. As you move through the Acts, your powers and your self mature — but abilities above your current Act stay locked until the story earns them. Your Archetype awakens (Shadow, Anima/Animus, Hero, Self) and each costs something inner. Your Karma tracks your evolution, not your ethics — and it shapes how the world greets you.

The system shields nothing: Mana is finite, there are no "bonus for a nice description," and if a rule contradicts the drama, the rule wins.

Reach the end — or break along the way

The end is not handed out. There is no default happy ending. Act V tests everything you've built; Act VI — Integration — belongs only to those who passed every trial without gaming the system. Whether your story ends in triumph, tragedy, or something true and strange is decided by the choices you made, not by the promise of a reward.

Strict but fair, with no exception. The illusion of freedom inside a world with immutable laws — that is where true stories are born.